In present days, network construction has become an increasingly important factor for successive business activities of a company. In today's business environment, research centers, production bases and business places of the company are scattered all around the world, so that it is important to connect them successively in order to survive in fierce competitions and to obtain competitiveness. Accordingly, there has been intensified a demand for information service environment in which a wide variety of information can be systematically shared and exchanged.
In an existing distributed computing environment in which various data can be efficiently shared between different types of computer systems located at different sites, it is essentially required to access databases at remote places and download the data in a web environment. Though the existing distributed computing environment supports a lot of object-oriented middleware and API (application program interfaces), the above-described necessity has not been satisfied yet.
In other words, though various prior art methods have been introduced to provide a web service in the distributed computing environment, such methods have certain drawbacks. For instance, in a traditional data accessing technology such as an object linking embedding (OLE) DB technique and an open DataBase connectivity (ODBC) technique, a client component corresponding to a server of a data provider should be installed in a client system to access an application program server and desired data. Further, a COM (component object model) object interface should be distributed for the operation of this system.
Among various object-oriented middleware for connecting a client to a server in the web environment is there, for example, a CORBA (common object request broker architecture). However, the CORBA still exhibits many defects caused by the use of a CGI (common gateway interface). Moreover, a processing speed of the CORBA is remarkably reduced in Internet communications. As another example of the object-oriented middleware, a DCOM (distributed component object model) also has a drawback in that it is subject to an operating system (OS) of Windows.
Methods for providing a web service in the distributed computing environment are implemented in a Korean Publication No. 2001-25959 invention titled “M/W system for integrating multiple databases and a method for accessing distributed different type databases by using same”, a Korean Patent No. 1998-63503 invention titled “Computer apparatus and method for communicating between software applications and computers on the world-wide web, and an invention disclosed in a thesis published in September, 1997 titled “A CORBA-Based Client/Server Architecture For Integrating Web Applications”.
The followings are detailed descriptions of the above identified prior art inventions.
The Publication No. 2001-25949 invention titled “M/W system for integrating multiple databases and a method for accessing distributed different type databases by using same” provides a middleware system for integrating multiple databases and a method for accessing different types of databases by using the middleware system. By such a middleware system, a user can access distributed different types of databases where information is stored according to different data models. In this system, if a client receives a query from the user, the client accesses through a broker an integrated server for processing information about the database that the user desires to access. Then, the query language is analyzed, converted and optimized and the result is provided from a processor to the client. By using this multiple database middleware system, various application programs and different types of data servers can be effectively connected.
The invention disclosed in the Korean Patent No. 1998-63503 titled “COMPUTER APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR COMMUNICATING BETWEEN SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS AND COMPUTERS ON THE WORLD-WIDE WEB” provides a computer system and method for implementing an access a software application from a web browser over the worldwide web (WWW). The system includes one or more computers executing a web browser, a web server application, an application gateway, and a software application. The user inputs data via the web browser, which is communicated to the web server application. The web server application authenticates the web browser and passes appropriate input data to an application gateway, including data to uniquely identify and track the user's request. The application gateway then performs the function requested in the web server input data by formatting the appropriate commands with the software application. The software application responds by outputting data to the application gateway that includes an identifier that the application gateway uses to match the output data with the web browser that requested the output data. This system thus allows numerous web browsers access the software application simultaneously.
The invention disclosed in the thesis published in September 1997 provides a CORBA-based client/server architecture for integrating Web applications. Java-based integration with CORBA is found to be more flexible and acceptable than CGI-based integration, and thus Java is employed for our architecture. The architecture consists of four components, Web client, Web server, ORB middleware, and object implementation server. To illustrate the usefulness of the architecture, Web applications are implemented for a real-life bank.
As described above, the technologies that are disclosed in the above-identified thesis and patented inventions exhibit certain deficiencies in establishing information service environment where a wide variety of information can be systematically shared and exchanged to thereby construct a worldwide information network.